Me: You mean you think you literally had the same experience as Doc Holliday?

Kilmer: Oh, sure. It’s not like I believed that I shot somebody, but I absolutely know what it feels like to pull the trigger and take someone’s life.

You understand how it feels to shoot someone as much as a person who has actually committed a murder?

I understand it more. It’s an actor’s job. A guy who’s lived through the horror of Vietnam has not spent his life preparing his mind for it. He’s some punk. Most guys were borderline criminal or poor, and that’s why they got sent to Vietnam. It was all the poor, wretched kids who got beat up by their dads, guys who didn’t get on the football team, couldn’t finagle a scholarship. They didn’t have the emotional equipment to handle that experience. But this is what an actor trains to do. I can more effectively represent that kid in Vietnam than a guy who was there.

Well, the guy’s got talent . . . if you call successfully stepping on his own dick “talent”. If that interview gets much attention (and it will in an election), I think it’ll be safe to assume that almost every voter who has ever seen combat, or is the family member or friend of a combat veteran, will choose to vote for anybody BUT Kilmer, should he run for office.

Wow. The Fatuometer needle is wrapped around the the peg, and apparenlty he’s stupid into the bargain. What a wanker … perhaps literally; I seem to recall that, in the Victorian era, those traits used to be attributed to excessive masturbation.

That there is a very special kind of self-absorbed stupid. Shame about Kilmer; he played such an amusingly smartassed Doc Holliday. Looks like he also has enough arrogance, idiocy, and condescending noblesse oblige for a truly terrifying career in government.

I found that Last Letter Home cleaned my brain out nicely after reading that drivel. Not recommended if you don’t like bagpipes.

Considering that people on his side of the fence are constantly screaming about white people culturally appropriating minority voices, I find Kilmer’s opinion amusing (in a sick sort of way) on all sorts of levels.

I recall reading, some years ago, a comment by a Hollywood director who directed a movie in which Kilmer appeared. He stated that he wouldn’t cast Val Kilmer as Val Kilmer in The Val Kilmer Story. Between his ego and his asshole, he is insufferable.

I remember seeing The Doors, and my date walking out and saying “Wow. That was impressive. They actually found someone who was more wrapped up in himself than Jim Morrison to play Morrison.”

Too true.

Friends, this is the danger of our Hollywood celebrity. For over half his life, poor Mr. Kilmer has believed that he, himself, was worthy of greatness, because he has been paid large sums to be seen portraying characters. He thus believes that his depictions matter more than the actual acts of the original characters that he portrays. In a certain way, you almost have to be sorry for him; he believes this alternative view, and is thus technically mentally ill. The math works for him, because the money that he’s paid for acting like someone else is real. And our society uses dollars to define worth.

So it may become the case that a person who has never done anything himself comes to believe that he is as great or greater than those who have shaped our world.

I’ve often said that there was a brink of wealth that makes one insane. I believe that celebrity vastly accelerates the process, and lowers the bar for how large the bank balance must be for insanity to kick in.